On to our Action Sports

With a final sprint into the never so excited to be seen town of Tully, Aaron rocked on for a dramatic first place, landing 2,183 kilometers! Eric followed in soon after, still smelling of booze from the previous night's field trip. THE RIDE has finally come to an end and was celebrated in good fashion, like it was 1999. We got into town and booked the last 3 beds at a banana pickers backpackers place. Talk about weird. Crazy canadian dude accused Aaron of smuggling bed bugs, we're putting money on him being looped on crack. Aaron told him paranoia is worse than bed bugs.

After we were cleared by management, we commenced our post race party. We scoured a massive meal and met up with a dutch and aussie couple, whom we saw in three different towns in as many days.

The next day was our great river rafting trip. But first we had to meet the soon to be powerhouse of Team Carnage, Sir David Flavin. Flav silenced the crowds and brushed away the competition as he entered as he stepped off his mini bus to face the raging Tully. Team Carnage enjoyed a picture perfect day and hit the biggest rapids. On the bus to the Tully, Aaron gave the call for all those wanting to "Go big or go home" and we summoned the only other two people that wanted to go big.

Raging down the river we had mastered our power strokes, convinced our guide we were up for the biggest rapids, and we only lost one team member. Aaron came up with the brilliant idea of seeing how long him and Eric could stay in the raft without ever holding on, even thru the class 5 rapids. It wasn't long before we lost a man. See the picture to figure out which man went down.

We had a killer day out on the river, jumping off cliffs, swimming down class 3 rapids, and having water wars with 4 awesome chicks in an enemy raft. Flav nearly died 17 times as he faced imminent doom. He stood strong in the face of danger, stared at death straight in the eyes and said, "Is that all you got! I'm going big!" Chad caught him crying in the corner 4 minutes later.

We had a few drinks at the Tully cafe before heading back to Cairns for Chad's last night and Flav's inaugural night. This was bound for greatness.

We made till dawn as Aaron and Eric wondered why Chad was going for a bike ride. Little did they know it was after 4am and Chad wasn't going for a late night ride, he had to leave for the airport. We quickly grabbed a few items we wanted to dump off, of course it was only a day later we realised we could have used most of the things we dropped off.

The next day was nearly a trip to Fitzroy Island but 2 hrs of sleep on our first day off in 50 days was not exciting. Instead we chilled Lagoon side with the lovely ladies from the enemy raft we met the day before, enjoyed a twilight fire show, and danced our faces off again at the bars.

We then managed the ferry to Fitzroy Island and rocked the kasbah on kayaks all day. We would eventually circumnavigate the island, stopping half way for some wicked snorkeling and hiking. We ate lunch in a boulder cave after seeing the most beautiful stingray Eric, Aaron, or Flav had ever seen. We also found Nemo.

We hiked to the summit of the mini island but did so via cliffside vines and canopied trees. Climbing up a 30ft vine, Aaron and Eric crept thru the tree tops to find Flav charging the backside boulder cliffs. We were running around the boulder island like a bunch of kids off Ritalin. On our descent, Aaron stumbled across a crevasse that split down the 30ft face we climbed up. It was only wide enough for us to slide thru sideways, Flav's nipples are still sore. but that could be because he keeps rubbing them when Aaron's looking. Not sure.

We made it back to the kayaks and Flav took over steering for the boat. Neither one of us could figure out why in the world we couldn't steer to save our lives. Flav was hitting the darn pedals but the friggin thing kept turning on us! After about 15 minutes of snakey curves, we were told our rudder was up. We felt like proper Japanese tourists at that point.

We are now getting ready for an AWESOME 5 day trip to the largest sand island in the world for some 4x4 offroading, shipwreck exploring, freshwater lakes, and late night campfires on FRASER Island! We are well excited. Of course this means we have to box up our bikes, which takes about 14 hours. Not cool.